Tag: new moon

Mine was stressful. I don’t recommend scheduling large-scale product fulfillment during good ol’ Mercury Gatorade, and in fact, I did not, but Mercury did anyway. It’s cool though, except your new moon ~ insights ~ are a little late this week. Sometimes I think I need a Gemini moon to write.

But the fact that they’re late is totally fine, because for some reason, everyone loves to talk about the moon on the day that she’s doing something exciting, but then forgets that her influence lingers for a lot longer than that.

You probably know already that the moon takes almost exactly a month to complete an orbit around month. The length of time it does in fact take is called a “lunar month” — it’s 29.5ish days. (There are slightly different figures for it depending on whether or not you’re using a sidereal system of astronomy / astrology or a tropical system. I’ll tell you about them in a later post because an explanation of them is necessary to understand why Ophicius is a scam and a lie. For now, think of them like the Celsius and Fahrenheit of figuring out where in the heck we are in relation to the other stuff in our neck of the galaxy.)

Throughout its lunar month, the moon passes through different “phases” depending on how much we can see of it. The amount we can see of it is directly related to where it is in relation to both the Sun and Earth. The moon just reflects the light of the Sun. The less of it that’s facing the Sun, the less we can see. You’ve probably incorrectly been told that the new moon is caused by Earth’s shadow; it’s actually the exact opposite. It occurs when the moon is between Earth and the Sun. The side of the moon that’s facing the Sun is getting all of the sunlight, and the side facing us isn’t getting any, so we don’t see a moon at all.

This is reflected pretty directly in astrology, too. At the new moon, from Earth’s point of view, the Sun and moon are lined right up — and so they’re in the same region of the zodiac, the same sign. We call this a conjunction. (As you might imagine, the full moon is when the opposite happens, and the moon is on the other side, directly opposite the Sun. That one is called an opposition.)

Anyway. The energy of the new moon and full moon are very different, which is why in astrology they’re said to “set” for different time periods. At the new moon, the Sun and moon are in the same sign, and working through the same kinds of energy. Since the Sun represents our will, and the moon represents our emotions, this loosely means that the new moon is the best time for us to act upon an intention to try and set it in motion — our desires and energy are lined up with our hopes and feelings, and we can set a goal more easily. The full moon, instead, is a time when things feel pulled apart or amped up by the oppositional activity, and is a time more prone to conflict (or passion, or elevation, or conviction.)

The new moon is the setting of the scene, and the events of the full moon usually come from and relate to it. So its themes have more a longer life than the period of opposition and conclusion that follow it. In this way, most astrologers will tell you that a typical new moon usually sets the tone of an entire month, where a full moon defines the following two weeks. Both have a tendency to completely “conclude” one month later during the next lunar cycle. (Eclipses are the same thing but longer.)

So, why am I telling you all this moon stuff now?

Because every lunation is impacted by the aspects it makes with the rest of its chart, and this one was really beautiful and special — it doesn’t have any.

The rest of the zodiac is doing all kinds of weird stuff, and on this month’s New Moon, the Sun and moon just kind of sat there quietly together, alone, ignoring everything, in lush and restful Taurus.

Sometimes we are completely honest that the things we have been through affect us emotionally. We can be really on top of unpacking and feeling it through just sensing the wear-and-tear the world puts on our hearts daily. We move into a period where pain feels pressing and understanding it intimately is necessary to survival, and analyzing where it came from is so clear as to be almost subconscious — because it’s obvious. We can feel exactly where it hurts.

But sometimes, even if we have gotten really articulate about how the history of ourselves has written us into being, and even if we have identified the places in ourselves where trauma has snagged and loosened our weaknesses, we still fail to trace the thread through to how we allow us to hurt ourselves through it. We can be unable to see how those emotional blockages, tensions and traumas that we have gotten so used to impact our ability to recognize what we deserve. We don’t slow down enough to feel the way the stress carries on. It’s through connecting with other people that we can often identify parts of ourselves that need attention and work, but actually unwinding it often requires real isolation, even though that’s the time when it’s sometimes the hardest to feel. Like a chronic condition or a mark on the body, we become so acclimated to its existence that we might almost forget that it is there. This might make our emotional states more manageable on a day-to-day basis, but it can also make us forget the injustice of the cause of our stress and distress in the first place. If you can’t remember that it shouldn’t have been done to you, you forget that you need to treat yourself with kindness and softness, and think of yourself as someone who is deserving, because you need it, right now and always from now on.

This New Moon falls in Taurus, a sign that always wants us to acknowledge what we materially need in every sector of our life, and even asks us to spoil ourselves a little, with any experience that stimulates and soothes our bodies. Since it does have the luxury of occurring unaspected by other planets, the whole month is about a part of you that is only for you. Every other planet can retrograde. Everyone in your life can be going through something you can’t fix or handle. Every step of the process can hit a roadblock. Everything else can go wrong, but there is one place in yourself that you trust enough to just be there. Accordingly, the new moon this month wants to let you know that no matter what else is going on, you can create a part of your life that feels good, and you can use it to treat yourself to space, solace, and rest. I hope you do.